Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/328

308 THE DECLINE AND FALL his own experience, the hardships of the poorer citizens, to whonn he addresses the salutary advice of emipfrating, without delay, from the smoke of Rome, since they might purchase, in the little towns of Italy, a cheerful, commodious dwelling, at the same price which they annually paid for a dark and miserable lodging. House-rent was therefore immoderately dear ; the rich acquired, at an enormous expense, the ground, which they covered with palaces and gardens ; but the body of the Roman people was crowded into a narrow space ; and the different floors and a])artments of the same house were divided, as it is still the custom of Paris and other cities, among several families of plebeians. IV. The total number of houses in the fourteen regions of the city is accurately stated in the description of Rome composed under the reign of Theodosius, and they amount to [48,392] forty-eight thousand three hundred and eighty-two."- The two classes of domtis and of insu/cv, into Avhich they ai'e divided, include all the habitations of the capital, of every rank and condition, from the marble palace of the Anicii, with a numerous establishment of freedmen and slaves, to the lofty and narrow lodging-house, where the poet Codrus and his wife were permitted to hire a wretched garret immediately under the tiles. If we adopt the same average which, under similar circumstances, has been found applicable to Paris,'^ and indifferently allow about twenty-five persons for each house of every degree, we may fairly estimate the inhabitants of Rome at twelve hundred thousand : a number which cannot be thought excessive for the capital of a mighty empire, though it exceeds the populousness of the greatest cities of modern Europe."* Augustus (Heineccius, Hist. Juris Roman, c. iv. p. i8i) the ordinary rent of the several cenacula, or apartments of an insula, annually produced forty thousand sesterces, between three and four hundred pounds sterling (Pandect. 1. xix. tit. li. No. 30), a sum which proves at once the large extent and high value of those common buildings. '2 This sum total is composed of 1780 [1790] Joniits, or great /wuses, of 46,602 insulcE, or plebeian habitations (see Nardini, Roma Antica, 1. iii. p. 88), and these numbers are ascertained by the agreement of the texts of the different NotiticE. Nardini, 1. viii. p. 498, 500. "3 See that accurate writer M. de Messance, Recherches sur la Population, p. 175-187. From probable or certain grounds, he assigns to Paris 23,565 houses, 71,114 families, and 576,630 inhabitants. •* i'his computation is not very different from that which M. Brotier, the last editor of Tacitus (torn. ii. p. 380), has assumed from similar principles ; though he seems to aim at a degree of precision which it is neither possible nor important to obtain. [This computation does not differ much from iliat of Bunsen, for the age of Augustus : 1,300,000, and that of von Wieteishcim (1,350,000). Gregorovius puts the population of Rome at the beginning of fifth century as low as 300,000, Mr. Hodgkin at about 1,000,000, cp. Italj' and her Invaders, i. p. 814.]